looduskalender.ee

The star-of-Bethlehem is like the embodiment of spring – airy and delicate, with slender leaves, up to 8 flowers gleaming as gold in the inflorescence umbel in the tip of a thin stalk.

 

Natural habitats are rich broadleaf forests, banks of water bodies … but this lily family plant loves being close to humans – it is found in parks as well as in the courtyard lawn.

 

Loving light, it must hurry with its flowering and development while trees are not in leaf yet. All early flowerers need much nutrients and the plant has stored them into the bulb covered with greyish-brown scales (incidentally nearly the only early spring bulb-forming flower in our nature),

The small or least star-of-Bethlehem (Gagea minima) is a lower-growing relative and its petals are pointed. The petal tips of the yellow star-of-Bethlehem are blunt.